HIST 1976C: Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Environmental Histories of Non-Human Actors

The Brown University Herbarium was founded in 1869 when the University acquired the collections of the Providence Franklin Society and Stephen Thayer Olney. Currently, the herbarium includes around 100,000 plant specimens and is an important depository of Rhode Island and New England collections from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is also rich in western and southern North American plants and includes special sets of historically valuable specimens from early western US expeditions.

The Herbarium is located in the Biomedical Center where the collections are housed in a climate controlled space designed to conform to modern standards.

With funding from the NSF digitization TCN collaborate grant “Mobilizing New England vascular plant specimen data to track environmental changes,” we are currently digitizing our specimens so, in addition to in-person visits, anyone with an internet connection will be able to consult Brown’s collection.

The Latin American Travelogues digital collection draws on the expertise of Prof. James N. Green, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Professor of Latin American History; Patricia Figueroa, Curator of Iberian and Latin American Collections; students; and the staff of the Center for Digital Scholarship.

The goal of this project is to create a digital collection of Latin American travel accounts written in the 16th-19th centuries. The works selected are linked to critical essays produced by undergraduate students who are enrolled in Prof. Green's courses on Latin American history. This site will serve as a free-access visual and research tool for students and scholars alike.

The main purpose of the project is to integrate Brown's Latin American special collections into the classroom; to introduce students to their research value; to promote them as an undergraduate research tool; to make them freely accessible world-wide; and to preserve them for a future generation of scholars.